The present invention relates generally to the collection of survey information, and more particularly, to a system and method for collecting survey information from targeted consumers.
Customer feedback is more important today than ever before. Sales and services have become highly competitive markets. Since these markets are driven by consumers, retailers and service providers need to relate with their customers. In a highly competitive environment, those retailers and service providers who understand customer behavior and have the ability to modify their operations and marketing efforts based on customer behavior are usually successful.
Customer behavior encompasses many aspects of consumer activity, including decisions as to where to shop and why. Retailers and service providers need to have feedback as to whether their marketing and pricing strategies are effective. Customer feedback and satisfaction are representative and generally predictive of consumer behavior. As a result, customer feedback and satisfaction are information for which retailers and service providers are willing to pay.
Currently, retailers and service providers obtain feedback from numerous sources. Some conventional sources are customer-initiated, such as in-store comment cards and web sites that publish customer reviews of products and services. Other conventional sources are company-initiated, such as surveys conducted by research firms or in-house corporate research departments.
Retailers encounter several difficulties in trying to obtain useful customer feedback and information from conventional sources. One problem is the timing of the information. Depending on the particular survey system being used, the time period between the commissioning of the survey and the receipt of survey results is long, possibly several months. The delay is related in part to the identification of customers for the survey and the collection and analysis of the survey results. A survey may be a general survey of a group that is representative of a customer base, in which customers must be identified. Customer contact data, such as an address, phone number and E-mail address, needs to be collected and maintained. The acquisition of such data is costly, labor intensive, and many times intrusive. Moreover, the creation and ongoing management of a customer database is expensive as well. People frequently move, thereby rendering their contact information obsolete.
Similarly, the collection and analysis of survey results affects the timing of survey information. Once the survey information has been collected, it needs to be input into a system which can process the information. Depending on the format of the collected information, the inputting, tabulation and processing of the collected survey information is time intensive.
Another problem is expense of administering the survey. Conventional survey providers charge fees for collecting and processing the survey information. The fees are usually based on the scope of the survey and are generally high because the cost of administering the survey is typically expensive. For example, surveys conducted by phone or mail are labor intensive and thus, expensive.
Conventional surveys that are based on customer-initiated feedback mechanisms do not provide a good representation of a customer base. An example of such a feedback mechanism is a web site that accepts and publishes feedback from unscreened customers. Many times, customer-initiated feedback comes from aggrieved customers only.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved system for the collection of survey information from customers. There is also a need for a system that can be used to solicit survey information from targeted customers on a timely basis. There is a need for a system and method for easily and economically collecting survey information from targeted customers of particular retailers and service providers.
It is therefore desirable that an improved method and system for collecting survey information from targeted customers be provided that overcome the limitations of conventional survey methods and systems.